Attention, Writers: The Next Blogging U. Challenge Is Here

Writing 201, which starts next Monday, July 21st, will help bloggers develop their storytelling and self-editing skills.

July 14, 2014

Ben Huberman

Last month, more than 4,000 bloggers joined us for Writing 101: Building a Blogging Habit, where they challenged themselves to carve out time to write regularly, and to experiment with new forms and styles. The result? Thousands of posts, comments, and follows, and countless new friendships.

We’re excited to announce Blogging U.’s next offering, which begins next Monday, July 21st. Writing 201: Finding Your Story will invite participants to take their craft to the next level by focusing on more advanced storytelling and self-editing tools, from finding the right angle from which to narrate your story, to coming up with strong opening sentences.

Good writing is essentially rewriting.

— Roald Dahl

Writing 201 is a self-directed course on the art of revision: four weeks dedicated to self-editing and rewriting, looking at our work with a magnifying glass, and improving it. If you have existing posts that you’d like to work on, expand, or refocus, whether as a result of Writing 101 or not, this course will be ideal for you.

The nitty gritty

Over four weeks, we’ll present four different workshops, each published on a Monday. You’re free to read each workshop at your own pace — absorb it all in one day, or tackle parts of it throughout the week.

There is no assignment or posting requirement at the end of each workshop, but we’ll offer a series of questions and discussions to reflect on every week. In your own time, you’ll experiment with these techniques in the specific pieces you’re working on. You’ll decide how much time and effort you’d like to spend each day.

Just like in Writing 101, you’ll be invited to join the Commons, a private forum for conversation, support, and feedback. Given the emphasis on editing, the Commons is a key component of this course: it will be the space to workshop your material. Workshopping is all about collaborative brainstorming: you’ll offer specific, constructive feedback to others, and they’ll do the same for you.

If you’re a self-motivated blogger and think your writing can benefit from intensive feedback and greater focus, then Writing 201 might just be the perfect next step for your blog and for your craft. You’ll find the signup form (and more details) here.

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You will receive an email invitation to join the Commons — we add bloggers in batches, which is why there’s some lag between your signup and the email invite. Let me know in case you don’t receive your invitation by Monday, though!

I hope newbies are accepted! I am eager to unleash my writing skills and learn how to better them. I just began my very first blog within the last week and feel that this course may help get me in the write (ha-ha) direction. (Silly, I know!)

To be honest, it would be hard for me to say since I know very little about technical article-writing. That said, nothing stops you from signing up, trying out the first week, and seeing if it’s something that you find useful or not. Generally, I’d say that any writer who depends on some sort of narrative in his/her pieces — non-fiction, fiction, travel, food, what have you — might find something there to work with.

While the workshops are in English, you’re welcome to join and write your own pieces in whatever language you feel comfortable in.

The one caveat is that you might find it hard to find other participants to give you feedback on your writing in a language other than English, but who knows? With hundreds of bloggers involved, it’s possible other Spanish writers will be available as well.

Your signup form has been received — you’ll receive your email invite very soon (as I explain above, we add bloggers in batches, so there’s a lag between the time you signed up and when you receive the email).

I’m glad you’re joining us again! Just to clarify, this challenge doesn’t have a daily publishing component, as it’s focused on self-editing and revision, though you’re of course welcome to write and post material at whatever pace you choose.

Looking forward to this. Hopefully this isn’t too much of a long shot, but I’m actually a professional editor enrolled to get back in touch with narrative writing. My creative side was steamrolled in university.

Perhaps some of us in the class could set up a prompt exchange or something?

That’s fine! If you’ve signed up two days ago you’ll definitely receive your email invite before the challenge begins on Monday (and, in the very unlikely event of a technical glitch, let me know if you still haven’t received it come Monday).

We conceived the challenge with prose writers in mind — mostly creative non-fiction, though anyone dealing with narrative and storytelling should feel at home there. Whether or not a poet would benefit from this as well is a really interesting question, and I’d love to hear what you think. You could give it a try and sign up; if you end up feeling there isn’t a good fit between the workshops and your work, you could choose not to continue.

Hi — you might want to give the signup form (the link is at the bottom of the post) another try; I just double checked and it works, and people can still sign up until the end of next week (so the sooner, the better, of course).

This challenge is geared more towards those bloggers who have material they’d like to revise and improve, but of course this doesn’t mean you won’t be gaining something, too — you can simply sign up and see how it goes. If you end up feeling that taking Blogging or Writing 101 makes more sense for you, you can always revisit this one later on.